How to strengthen your pelvic floor or core muscles

“ If there is one group of muscles that is most undervalued it is the core muscles”.

Your core muscles form a hammock like structure at the base of your pelvis that supports and locates your pelvic organs. You can feel these muscles working when you try to stop urinating midstream and strengthening them can significantly reduce incontinence. Women can use these muscles to tighten their vagina and men can delay orgasm and develop a stronger erection by tightening the base of the penis.

They are also critical to fitness exercises because they:

• Maintain the pelvis in a stable neutral position

• Provide a fixed reference for all lower/upper body movements

• Strongly connect the lower/upper body for better load transference

The direct method of training these muscles is to use Kugel exercises. All you need to do is relax your body (e.g. don’t tense your buttocks) and squeeze/relax your core muscles for 10 to 40 repetitions, a few times each day. You can begin by contracting/relaxing for 3 seconds and build this up to 10 seconds or more. A variation is to increase the contraction each time you count from 1 to 10 and then relax slowly.

The indirect method of training these muscles is to do whole body exercises that need strong core muscle engagement. These are three beginner exercises that you can try:

The first exercise is the plank and you need to maintain a straight body position for as long as possible. Strongly engage your core to stop your stomach sagging, keep your upper arms at 90 degrees to the floor and maintain a neutral spine with the neck lengthened.

The second exercise is a crunch. Engage your core to keep your buttocks and lower back sucked into the ground and raise/lower your chest a small distance off the floor as many times as possible.

The third exercise is a diagonal leg and arm lift. Keep your upper leg and arm at 90 degrees to the floor and strongly engage your core to keep your pelvis fixed and level. Slowly and simultaneously raise and lower your leg and opposite arm as many times as possible until you can no longer keep your pelvis still.

Take care,